makes no difference

Summary:

"Are you going to lay down, or what?" Derek asks, voice low. / In which Derek is not a rock, there is some unexplained touching, and Stiles has no idea what is going on, but he does know comets are not meteors.

Notes:

Itunes meme fic for 'When You Wish Upon A Star'. Warm up for writing in this fandom, too, I guess?

Work Text:

Stiles is already way too far to turn back when he realizes it's probably not the best idea to walk alone in the woods, and even further when his flashlight goes out. He's close enough to Derek's already to stumble in that general direction with his phone held out in front of him as a really shitty flashlight alternative, though, so he keeps going with no general plan. It's not like he can knock on Derek's door and ask for help, but he figures he can sit near by and call Scott or something once he knows where he is for sure.

There are a ton of weird noises in the woods, so he's glad when he can see the dark outline of the house through a clearing of trees, and there's a flat rock he notices when he's close enough for his phone screen to light up a bit of the clearing in elongated shadows. He can just wait at the rock and not bother anything and hopefully nothing will bother him. Great plan.

Except the rock rolls over as he's walking toward it and rocks don't roll over, so Stiles jumps back, drops his phone, maybe shrieks a little, and then gets laughed at, gruff and low, by the rock.

"What the fuck," Stiles says, running his palm over the nearby grass in a crouch to find his phone. When he finds it he stands back up and walks over, shining his phone light directly towards Derek's stupid scary not-a-rock face. "Who just lays down on their lawn like that?"

Derek gestures vaguely toward where Stiles is standing like that's supposed to mean something. It takes a minute, but Stiles gets it -- he probably shouldn't be the one talking in this situation.

He waits a few beats for something to happen, creating increasingly scary (he's pretty sure Derek would never actually kill him, not now at least, but hey) scenarios until the silence makes him want to rock back on his heels.

"Are you going to lay down, or what?" Derek asks, voice low. For a second he almost looks amused, but Stiles blinks and it's gone and he remembers that Derek's face is usually incapable of emotion.

Stiles pauses with his mouth half-open, unsure of what he was even about to say (which happens all the time, so he doesn't worry about it), and clears his throat instead. "On the ground?" he asks after a second, completely and totally thrown. Is he being invited to lay down? Is Derek being passive-agressive in some new over-Stiles'-head way?

It's dark, but not dark enough that Stiles can miss the way Derek rolls his eyes as he rolls over onto his back again, arms crossed over his chest.

"Okay," Stiles says, drawing out the vowel and staring at the ground. "I'm going to lay down," he offers, as a sort of warning in case Derek wasn't actually offering.

Derek grunts, which is again a very ambiguous sort of thing that throws Stiles off as he's starting to crouch down. It's hard to balance in a crouch so he ends up just laying down anyway, barely a half a foot of space between them because he misjudged and it would be weird to sort of roll-shuffle further away.

The ground is pretty bumpy, which Stiles expected, so he has to really twist and dig his shoulders in to settle and he's almost got the perfect ground to spine angle when Derek throws out a hand onto his chest, nearly knocking the wind out of him.

"Oof, ow?" Stlies says.

"Sorry," Derek says, though he sounds the farthest from it. "Jesus, though, stop with the wiggling."

"Wiggling? Really? It was more of a twist, or --"

Derek's hand (still on his chest, huh) presses in a little and Stiles trails off, waiting for Derek to move his arm away. He doesn't, so Stiles concentrates instead on breathing evenly.

It's quiet for a long stretch of time, and Stiles knows he's still fidgeting a little, his fingers digging into the grass and dirt (he stops, belatedly realizing Derek can probably hear the scratch-scratch of it and it might be annoying.) He kind of wants to get his phone out and text Scott about this current weirdness, almost as much as he doesn't want to tell anyone at all.

"Comet," Derek says after a long while. His hand flexes over Stiles' chest, a kind of nudge-scratch that makes Stiles, inexplicably, want to arch his back up into the press.

"Shooting star," Stiles says, squinting up at the sky just as the little trail of light fades out. "Or meteor, whatever, but not a comet, sorry."

Derek makes a low, rumbly sort of sound. "Really?"

Stiles shrugs into the ground, acutely aware of the fact Derek's hand is still sort of scratching into his chest. "No need for sarcasm, I know if it's not the moon you probably don't care about accuracy, but that was definitely a --"

"No," Derek says, cutting him off. "That was -- interesting."

"Oh," Stiles says. He's 90% certain that wasn't sarcastic, too.

"I have more astral knowledge, if you're into that," he adds.

"Okay," Derek says, tapping his fingers on Stiles' chest.

"Okay? Okay." Stiles can do this, lay down next to Derek Hale and talk about stars and get a nice, warm, scratchy chest massage at the same time.

"Which is a comet?" Derek asks, because apparently they are doing this thing, whatever.

Stiles wiggles -- twists, okay -- a little to get more comfortable (and if it conveniently lets him arch up into the press of Derek's palm to get him to keep moving his fingers, well) and clears his throat. "Well, for starters --"